On March 19, GM put a halt on Chevrolet Volt production in order to get rid of some of the older versions of the plug-in electric hybrid and make room for those with the recent battery fix. Also, new Volts with the changes made for the California market are making their way into the inventory.

The production halt was expected to last for four weeks. However, new reports show that Volt production will resume a few days earlier than planned. GM has already started notifying Detroit-Hamtramck plant employees, where the Volt is assembled.

It's a good time to bring Volt production back to life, since it seems that Volt popularity has risen recently. In March, U.S. Volt sales shot up to 2,289, which is its best month yet since release. Of that total, 2,129 were sold to retail customers while 160 were sold to fleet customers.

This surge in sales couldn't have come at a better time, either. The Volt had a difficult year throughout much of 2011 and during the beginning of 2012 due to problems with battery fires.

In May 2011, Chevrolet's Volt caught fire three weeks after a side-impact crash test conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Volt was parked in a NHTSA testing facility in Wisconsin, and was so severe that it ended up catching nearby cars on fire as well. This led to an investigation into the safety of lithium batteries.

GM moved quickly, offering loaner vehicles to customers and even buying Volts back from scared owners. In January 2012, GM recalled 8,000 Volts off the road as well as another 4,400 for sale in showrooms to fix the batteries. The fix entailed the addition of steel to the plate that protects the EV's T-shaped, 400-pound battery. This aimed to prevent penetration into the battery in case of an auto accident, and would stop both coolant from leaking and would evenly distribute the force of a crash.

Maybe these are the equivalent of Beta tape, but then if no one had bothered working at the technology and risking mistakes along the way then you'd still be listening to records on your gramophone (or iGramophone as it would now be called) rather than blurays.

Diesel and hydrogen? First of all, diesel comes from the same place as petrol and you might as well use both. I don't think fossil fuels need more investment.

Hydrogen is just a form of energy store. The technology is more expensive than owning a battery and you still have to go to a garage to fill up. At least with battery electrics, people have a choice to trickle charge at home (cheap to install), fast charge at home (expensive to install) or at a public charging station. It is much easier to install a quick charging station than it is to have a specialized hydrogen station.

Another advantage of pure electric is that you won't need truck deliveries. I would argue that just the national grid is more efficient at transmitting energy than a hydrogen garage.

"...and bad ideas are just bad ideas. Need I pull out my laser-disc player I didn't buy? Or where did I keep that Beta tape deck I never got...

I hope Congress figures it out eventually, then we can funnel money into real solutions like diesel and hydrogen and electric hybrids of those."

There is absolutely no doubt electric cars will eventually replace gas cars the only question is when. The efficiency, simplicity, safety, and reliability of an electric motor is so much better than gas that eventually nobody will want a gas car. Its simply a matter of when batteries or super capacitors reach a point where the economics works out.

PS I fly RC planes and almost everybody is dumping wet fuel engines for the convenience of electric power.

CNG is the closest to a realistic substitute, but it also has an infrastructure problem (not as bad as H2, but its there). Building a garage CNG pump is a lot more involved (and dangerous) than a 240V outlet.

PHEV is not a bad idea in any sense of the word. They're essentially just regular hybrids with a bigger battery and a charger. The former is already cost effective (400k hybrids sold per year in the US), and the latter is pretty much there over vehicle lifetime (5000 cycles of 10 kWh displaces ~4000 gallons of gas), though the payback time needs to be shorter for mass market appeal.

The tax credit unquestionably spurring demand. It's only going to be a total of $1.5B as it is ($7500 for 200k EVs), and by the time runs out, EVs will be competitive with gas, unless we get another crisis that drops the price of gas.

CNG filling at home does not make sense. Nor do CNG powered vehicles for consumers. It takes just as long to fill up as electric, and the primary benefits of low fuel cost and longer range (versus electric) are offset by higher vehicle cost (you're paying $10k more for a CNG Civic versus a conventional civic), less performance, less efficient and less places to fill up outside the home (far more EV charging stations than CNG fill ups).

Keep in mind that filling up your CNG vehicle at home uses up about around ~1.4 KWh/gallon equivalent so for a 8 gallon tank is the same as charging an Volt.

Plus natural gas burned a power plant is more efficient than it being burned in your engine.

The only place where I see CNG powered vehicles make sense, is large fleet owners where the infrastructure cost is a smaller part of the total cost for the vehicle/fuel and overhead cost of NG compression and fill-up is less of an issue. Having more CNG fill ups would make sense, but until that happens I can't recommend CNG over EV.